BOTTOM LINE: We see so many — so many! — movies about how tough is the transition is from boyhood to male adolescence to manhood. And almost none about girls at the same precarious ages. So for that alone, this movie is a paradigm-smashing win for female representation. But this movie is also so radically different in how it tells its story, is so devoid of the usual tropes and clichés, that it’s almost impossible to score using these criteria, which were developed to smack those tropes and clichés. That a young girl’s emotions are used to tell a story about universal human experience is something new and special.

NOTE: This is not a “review” of Inside Out! It is simply an examination of how well or how poorly it represents women. (A movie that represents women well can still be a terrible film; a movie that represents women poorly can still be a great film.) Read my review of Inside Out.

I know it’s your own scoring system with a specific set of criteria (and I really don’t want to come across sounding like a bitter male in this, because I really enjoy reading these) but I just wonder if the father being primarily defined by his emotional or biological relationship with a child could counter the only negative score you have on this film.

I feel that the film treats both genders equally in this regard; in that the primary human POV is a child, so both parents will generally be defined by their relationship to a child. Could equal treatment of both genders in negative items counter the negative aspects of how the women are portrayed?